Joseph Stalin Research Paper

The wise words of Stalin

“A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” Are the words of a man
known for killing more of his own people than his own people, Josef Stalin. He meant that it is less easy to look at mass human suffering in the way we would look at only one or two victims. I happen to agree with this point.

These words are still true to this day. Take into account the recent shootings of Reporter
Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward of WJBD-TV. They got a huge memorial and everyone heard about it. However, when people look at the millions of victims in the fairly recent earthquake in haiti, peopel tend to be less sympathetic. According to Ph.D. Keith payne in his entry on this subject ( the qoute that is) on Psychology Today qoutes "Joseph Stalin is reputed to have said that the death of one person is a tragedy; the death of one million is a statistic. And Mother Teresa once said, "If I look at the mass I will never act." When Stalin and Mother Teresa agree on a point, I sit up and pay attention. It turns out that the human tendency to turn away from mass suffering is well documented."

Josef Stalin was a man of experience.

The origins of this qoute originate from a caucus held in russia when Stalin was Comissioner of munitions. One of the cheif matters of the meeting was famine in ukraine. One government official stood and gave a speech on the matter and then began to calcuate death figures, Stalin quickly interupted him and stated his well acclaimed qoute " A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a

statistic"

One other point to consider is that people can not really wrap their heads around the number one million. So technically speaking we cannot feel sympathy for millions of people at once if we can't even visualize the number. When this occurs, we tend to try to simplify the numbers into measurable data. Hence the quote by Stalin “ A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

Like i said before, Josef Stalin was a very smart and experienced man who knew what he was talking about. His sayings are true and are still true to this day. We as humans are in capable of "giving too much sympathy" apparently and like to symplify sensitive information. I know i've said it once but i'll say it again, Mr. Stalin was right when he said the words " a single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic."